As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems may be configured to boot an operating system from a variety of sources using a variety of methodologies (e.g., from a floppy disc, an optical disc (CD/DVD), a hard disc drive, a flash drive, a network etc.). Each boot method is associated with a separate boot loader to allow an information handling system to boot an operating system using the specific method. Each boot loader may include identical content required for booting an operating system (e.g., an operating system kernel, initial ramdisk files etc.), but such content may not be accessed and booted from without being combined with or “wrapped” in a boot loader. This content may be referred to as “non-bootable” content. Accordingly, to allow an information handling system to boot an operating system using multiple methodologies, the same non-bootable content may be replicated and combined with separate boot loaders to create multiple bootable images with the same non-bootable content stored on multiple computer readable mediums (e.g., CD, floppy, hard drive, flash drive). In traditional systems, this required replication may result in inefficiencies and inflexibility in terms of an information handling system booting an operating system using new or different boot methodologies.
For example, an information handling system may be configured to boot from a CD and a flash drive, but the user of the information handling system may only have a bootable CD that includes a bootable image of an operating system. For a variety of reasons, the user may desire to boot the information handling system from the flash drive. However, the user may not simply copy the bootable image from the CD to the flash drive, because the boot loader for booting from the CD may be different from boot loader for booting from the flash drive (even though the non-bootable content may be identical). Accordingly, with traditional systems, the user may need to request a flash drive boot image that includes a boot loader associated with booting from a flash drive and the same non-bootable content of the CD boot image. This process may be slow, inconvenient and cumbersome for the user.